


Distraction Techniques

by gnimaerd



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 20:52:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3354890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slightly AU (Sara's alive); In pain from an injury during vigilante-ing, Laurel can't reach her sponsor, so Felicity comes up with a novel way to distract her from her cravings. On a not unrelated note, there is kissing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distraction Techniques

Felicity Smoak talks incessantly and flusters easily, but she's surprisingly good with a needle and thread.

 

“It only took like a month before I could do this without my hands shaking,” she tells Laurel, cheerfully, as she stitches up the deep cut in her forearm. “Oliver gave me lots of practice. Are you sure you don't want something for the pain?”

 

“No, thank you,” Laurel keeps her teeth gritted. It hurts like fuck but she doesn't trust herself around pills anymore. Besides, both Oliver and Sara can take this sort of thing without drugs – she's not gonna be the newbie superhero who wimps out with her first proper injury.

 

Felicity smiles, though it comes out looking slightly pained, her demeanour oozing nervous sympathy. “You're nearly done, anyway.”

 

Not nearly done enough, though. It takes another ten minutes, because the cut is long and very, very deep. Laurel finds herself holding back horrible, humiliating tears of pain, her knuckles white, her nails breaking the skin of her palms as she clenches her fists. She concentrates on breathing rather than screaming.

 

“ _Sorry_ ,” Felicity tells her, as she just barely stifles a squeak of pain, the needle sinking in again, “sorry – sorry – you're nearly done – ”

 

“Hurry up,” Laurel hisses, shuddering.

 

“One more – just one, try and hold still, just a minute,” Felicity pats the good skin on Laurel's injured arm, and Laurel wonders if she talks to Oliver in that tone, like a pre-k teacher with an angry toddler to sooth.

 

The last stitch goes in and Laurel gives in to the temptation to spit out three of the worst expletives in her vocabulary, clutching her own wrist to stop herself jerking away from Felicity's needle.

 

“I did not know you knew that word,” Felicity looks faintly impressed. “Not even Diggle uses that one.”

 

“I'm a lawyer – I've spent a lot of time around men who don't censor themselves in polite society,” Laurel replies, blinking back stars, “are you telling me Sara hasn't come up with worse than that?”

 

“Sara doesn't react to pain – at least not stitches,” Felicity shakes her head, and snips the thread on the last little knot in Laurel's arm, puts the needle and surgical pliers aside. “And when she swears it's mostly in Mandarin. Or Arabic. Or – Urdu. I think. Digg's the worst because – you know. Ex-military stuff.”

 

“What about Oliver?”

 

“Actually he's not bad,” Felicity frowns for a moment, considering. “No, he doesn't swear much. He just bottles it all up, gets all dead-shark-y behind the eyes.”

 

She taps her glasses by way of illustration. Laurel manages a faint smile. The pain in her arm is receding to a more tolerable burning throb, and her ability to breathe evenly is returning.

 

“Can you help me off with this stuff?” She indicates her leather get-up. Her Black Canary uniform (she likes to think of it as a uniform, like her father's, attached as it is to a specific set of values, duties, desires), is not the most accessible of garments to begin with. One-handed there's no way it's coming off without help.

 

Felicity obliges, undoing laces and buttons and two zips and a couple of complicated little catches at her neck. It's all really a form of light armour, lots of interlocking leather pieces designed to protect her joints, her limbs, her vital organs. And without it she'd have needed more than stitches tonight, she knows. But she really does wish Oliver and Sara had designed it with more of a view as to the practicalities of how long it takes to get it all on and off.

 

Felicity's fingers momentarily skirt over bare skin on her back, gentle and deft, and Laurel finds herself shuddering – twitching reflexively. Felicity freezes.

 

“Did I hurt you? Sorry.”

 

“No,” Laurel shakes her head. “Just been a while since anyone touched me with something that wasn't a weapon or a needle.”

 

“Sorry,” Felicity carefully goes back to unlacing her. “I didn't mean to – ”

 

“It's fine, Felicity.” She reaches back to prod her, gently. “I'm fine.”

 

There's not much that's going to make her feel better than a drink would, but that's not an option (not ever, she reminds herself, firmly), so Felicity's company, warm and kind and human, will have to do. And it's not bad, all things considered. Felicity's easy, non-judgemental, will fill a room with chatter so that Laurel doesn't need to talk. She can see why Oliver likes having her around.

 

Plus Felicity is used to bodies, naked and numb with exhaustion, bruised and bleeding. So Laurel can peel her way out of her uniform, in the aftermath of saving the lives of at least fourteen people, and doesn't have to care about a certain IT specialist seeing her nipples. Felicity has most certainly seen more shocking things in the recent past.

 

She shrugs her way out the last of her leathers as Felicity, gaze politely averted, hands her a warm, wet towel to get the crusting blood stains off her arms, and wipe the sweat off her torso because damn, leather just doesn't breathe.

 

“I think this outfit might be giving me a rash,” she tells Felicity, as she examines a patch of red, prickly goosebumps by her naval. “We have got to talk to your friends over at star labs about hooking me up with – what is it Ollie's mask is made of?”

 

“It's a breathable microfabric,” Felicity replies – she has picked up Laurel's bag and carries it over, so that Laurel can start rummaging for her civilian clothes.

 

“That – that sounds good. Let's get some of that.”

 

“It's expensive.”

 

“Ollie can put it on his tab,” Laurel retrieves her underwear over Felicity's smile. “Can you – uh, help me with this?”

 

She's not getting her bra done up – she can't really bend her arm back the right way. Felicity hastily gathers the clips behind her back. “Sure.”

 

“Sorry – about – ”

 

“You should see what I have to do for Oliver sometimes,” Felicity waves a hand then clearly realises how that sounds, “I mean – not that he – would ever ask anything – inappropriate – we don't – he doesn't – I didn't mean – one time he busted his knee so badly he couldn't walk for three weeks and I practically had to carry him downstairs every day and he was _really heavy_ – ”

 

Laurel prods her again, without saying anything, and feels rather than sees Felicity's self-conscious smile. Her fingers are lingering on Laurel's back, and Laurel manages not to shudder.

 

Getting her blouse on is something of a gauntlet – the cut in her arm is still throbbing, dully, and burns at the faintest brush of the fabric over her skin. Felicity has to unbutton the cuff and ease the sleeve up her arm for her and even after Laurel finds herself compulsively clutching her wrist again, trying to manage the pain.

 

“I'm going to need to call my sponsor,” she mutters, as Felicity does her buttons up for her.

 

“What?”

 

“I'm in pain – addicts in pain tend to do stupid things,” Laurel squeezes her wrist between her middle finger a thumb, feeling the pulse point racing.

 

“Is there anything I can do?” Felicity's concern is genuine, her gaze penetrative.

 

Laurel shakes her head. “I'm fine.”

 

But three missed calls later and her sponsor isn't picking up. It's the small hours of the morning so this isn't unexpected, but it still makes Laurel's gut churn. There's a nasty craving brewing under her skin.

 

She could call her dad, of course, but she'd have to find a way to explain... this. Her injuries, the late night. And he's perilously close to knowing exactly what it is she's up to these days anyway and god she doesn't want to worry him. He has his own sobriety to deal with.

 

“Can I help?” Felicity asks, again, softly – the third time in the last half hour. “What does your sponser do? We could do that.”

 

Laurel can't help a small, soft smile. She doesn't really want to talk to Felicity, not about this – any more than she could talk to Ollie or Sara about it. She needs this part of herself to be kept separate from that one – the addict in her is so opposite to the hero. Letting them mix would feel almost sacrilegious.

 

“Or,” Felicity suggests, “something else. A distraction.”

 

Laurel flops sideways onto the sofa she's been occupying for the last half hour. She was the one who insisted on Oliver accommodating her requirement for soft furnishings (“I'm not going out to save the damn world every night only to come back here and sit on concrete. My butt's not going numb for your minimalist aesthetic.”) She's bone tired and she aches, everywhere, but her mind is a live wire, needy and full of things she can't be letting herself think.

 

“It's hard to distract from... this sort of thing,” she tells Felicity, as the other woman seats herself by her feet on the floor.

 

Felicity quirks her head, curiously. “Is that a challenge? Cause you know I could totally take that as a challenge, right?”

 

Laurel reaches to tap her shoulder. “Fine. Take it as a challenge. You're the genius here – what were you thinking?”

 

Felicity bites her lip for a second, something thoughtful – impish – about her, all of a sudden. Coy? Coy.

 

And Laurel works out what she's thinking a split second before she acts on it.

 

Just the softest little brush of her mouth to Felicity's, warm and breathy. It's shy, for a gesture that's so damn forward – like if Laurel were gonna kiss someone for the first time, without asking, out of the blue, she'd go all the way in, just go, fake the confidence. (That's, incidentally, how she got Oliver, a lifetime ago). But Felicity's is just this careful little contact, hardly there at all – except of course that suddenly Laurel is aware of every nerve ending in her body and also that Felicity smells incredible.

 

Like cupcakes. God, what kind of soap does this woman use?

 

She makes a mental note to ask her before she props herself up on her elbows to kiss her back, catching at Felicity's jaw to stop her following her instinct to back away.

 

“Okay,” Laurel murmurs, “that's good.”

 

Felicity nods, her eyelashes flickering.

 

“Any other ideas?”

 

She can tell by the deep pink flush creeping up Felicity's neck that yes, the computer scientist has lots and lots of other ideas right about now. “I'm sorry,” she sputters, hastily, rubbing her hands together, “I just – I always thought you were so pretty but you and Oliver are so – I mean – so I've never – ”

 

Laurel pulls her up, onto her knees on the floor and kisses her again, cupping her face in her hands to tilt her head to the right angle.  Felicity's tongue laps clumsily against her lips, her breath coming in short little hitches. This is good, Laurel thinks, excellent. Yes. This will do.

 

Felicity blinks up at her, wide eyed, a moment later. “Okay,” she breathes, and Laurel can't help but allow herself a satisfied smirk.

 

“Here,” she tugs Felicity again, feeling a little clumsy herself, “come here – ”

 

Felicity is up on the couch next to her in a moment, and then sprawled across her, awkward and on top of her and planting light, sweet little kisses all over Laurel's face and wow this is a lot of body contact all of a sudden. Laurel runs her hands up over Felicity's back, experimental, testing all these new, interesting boundaries and the lack of them – feels Felicity react with a little shiver of her own, her breath hitching against Laurel's cheek.

 

Laurel has had sex with two women in her entire life: once in her first couple of months at college (she was convincing herself that she was a grown up and could do grown up things like have wild, experimental sex – although in actuality it had been drunken and disappointing) and once a week or so after the Gambit went down, when she had simply wanted to forget herself and had gone to an unfamiliar bar alone and a girl had come on to her and she'd been unable to think of a good reason to turn her down. That time had been less disappointing, probably because she'd had fewer expectations.

 

Does she have expectations of Felicity? No, she decides. But this situation is complicated in ways that make it a terrible idea anyway – outside of all the life and death they deal with on a daily basis there's also Oliver, who is her ex and Felicity's... something.

 

She's pulling Felicity's blouse out of the waistband of her skirt and slipping her fingers beneath, finding hot, smooth skin before she's quite let her brain catch onto this fact, however (the fact of, you know, Oliver). But Felicity doesn't seem especially bothered by this idea and anyway, she started this, didn't she? And now she's making appreciative, shiver-y murmuring sounds against Laurel's throat as she kisses her there and Laurel's fingers keep travelling all over newly exposed skin. Alright, she decides, alright, fine - this is all just - fine.   
  
  
Better than fine, actually.

 

Laurel keeps kissing her.


End file.
